Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.

[dkabq]

Looks like the US is as bad as Scotland:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/20/health/covid-cdc-data.html

[Kiero]

Looks like the US is as bad as Scotland:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/20/health/covid-cdc-data.html

Someone else did it first! That's makes it alright, or something.

[Kiero]

Cue more shrieks from the covid bed-wetters of the UK on Monday, when the government announced all restrictions end on 25th March (temporarily - they're not revoking the laws that give them the powers to put them all in place again at a whim). Yet more virtue-signalling tossers on Twatter had to make a point of how they're going to carry on ragging up and all the other shit even though they don't have to. Go them!

Meanwhile, the government also quietly approved jabs for 5-11 year olds. Cunts. Despite the latest JCVI recommendation saying 4 million children would have to be jabbed to spare one child hospitalisation. Not even preventing a death, hospitalisation. Meanwhile those 4 million jabs would bring hundreds of deaths and tens of thousands of vaccine injuries. Totally worth it.

Needless to say, no fucking way any of my children are being jabbed with that shit.

[jhkim]

We saw it happen in the span of days with the mask issue when Fauci (etal.) was advising against masks, and then suddenly U-turned when the cheque cleared. All D-team members immediately updated to the new "correct" belief system, without asking any uncomfortable questions.

It's happened on basically every issue I can think of: Masks, forced medical treatment, internal passports, child sexual abuse, international wars, factory farming, GMOs, etc. As soon as the propaganda outlets began signaling that a certain thing was now part of the orthodox belief system, that's all it takes.

I'm not even sure what you're calling the orthodoxy on GMOs, but the anti-GMO movement is divided among Democrats and Republicans. Lots of Democrats are hippy all-natural, pro-organic, anti-GMO -- as are many Republicans. While there has been some incremental shift, non-GMO labelling remains popular among a lot of Democrats. I live right next to a Whole Foods in a strongly Democratic district, and I see tons of people into the non-GMO and/or organic stuff. cf. https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2016/12/01/the-new-food-fights/   

I also don't see any general change on foreign wars among Democrats. Historically, mainstream Democrats have always been hawkish - just less hawkish than the Republicans. Clinton and Obama both engaged in plenty of war-making with the support of mainstream Democrats, but Bush's invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq went farther. On this issue, the main flip-flop has been that many Republicans have changed to being opposed to foreign wars, not that Democrats have changed.

This isn't to say that Democrats haven't changed in general - but most of their change is incremental.

[GeekyBugle]

Well, now it's safe to say that Omicron is both less deadly and a better vaccine than the jabs...

[dkabq]

Well, now it's safe to say that Omicron is both less deadly and a better vaccine than the jabs...

No surprise there. Many of the standard set of vaccines for Americans (e.g., measles, mumps, rubella, etc.) are not required if you have already had the disease. But for some, never explained, reasons covid natural immunity was summarily rejected. I am guessing because SCIENCE!(tm).

[dkabq]

New Health Affairs Paper Proves Mask Mandates Work| Or Does It? Challenges with Obs Research
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA-tljS4dh8

tl:dr
https://youtu.be/DA-tljS4dh8?t=879

This is why I, in part, respectfully disagree with Pat regarding the value of using statistical studies to determine the effectiveness of masking or lock-downs. Where I would agree is if, as Dr Prasad notes, clustered RCTs had been done. And with 100% transparency (e.g. all data, models, software, etc. are open source) and a robust, formal review process similar to that used for nuclear power plant licenses (you don't get to dismiss NRC or ACRS comments/questions on your analysis by declaring that you represent the science).

[Pat]

New Health Affairs Paper Proves Mask Mandates Work| Or Does It? Challenges with Obs Research
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA-tljS4dh8

tl:dr
https://youtu.be/DA-tljS4dh8?t=879

This is why I, in part, respectfully disagree with Pat regarding the value of using statistical studies to determine the effectiveness of masking or lock-downs. Where I would agree is if, as Dr Prasad notes, clustered RCTs had been done. And with 100% transparency (e.g. all data, models, software, etc. are open source) and a robust, formal review process similar to that used for nuclear power plant licenses (you don't get to dismiss NRC or ACRS comments/questions on your analysis by declaring that you represent the science).

I'm not sure what you're referring to. I definitely believe there are statistical problems with all the studies, and I've repeated said the science is very weak. The basic problem is that, given a set of data, and given there are no clear and universal method for controlling for variables, there will always be ways of controlling for variables that show one result, or show the complete opposite. That's why it's important to decide, publicly and before your study is conducted, which variables will be controlled for, and how. It's a ward against self-selection bias. But even that doesn't erase the problem, because there is a strong bias toward publishing significant results, and not publishing negative results. And this bias occurs at multiple levels. (Did you find anything? Nah, let's try again. You didn't find anything, why would we publish this?)

[dkabq]

New Health Affairs Paper Proves Mask Mandates Work| Or Does It? Challenges with Obs Research
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA-tljS4dh8

tl:dr
https://youtu.be/DA-tljS4dh8?t=879

This is why I, in part, respectfully disagree with Pat regarding the value of using statistical studies to determine the effectiveness of masking or lock-downs. Where I would agree is if, as Dr Prasad notes, clustered RCTs had been done. And with 100% transparency (e.g. all data, models, software, etc. are open source) and a robust, formal review process similar to that used for nuclear power plant licenses (you don't get to dismiss NRC or ACRS comments/questions on your analysis by declaring that you represent the science).

I'm not sure what you're referring to. I definitely believe there are statistical problems with all the studies, and I've repeated said the science is very weak. The basic problem is that, given a set of data, and given there are no clear and universal method for controlling for variables, there will always be ways of controlling for variables that show one result, or show the complete opposite. That's why it's important to decide, publicly and before your study is conducted, which variables will be controlled for, and how. It's a ward against self-selection bias. But even that doesn't erase the problem, because there is a strong bias toward publishing significant results, and not publishing negative results. And this bias occurs at multiple levels. (Did you find anything? Nah, let's try again. You didn't find anything, why would we publish this?)

Pages back (or maybe on a different thread) we had had a small difference of opinion on statistical vs. mechanistic studies. I prefer mechanistic studies to statistical studies, you had the opposite opinion. I suppose it comes down to my being mistrustful of correlation; I prefer causal relationships driven by first principles. That said, statistical studies, if done correctly, can be useful to tell you where to look for causal relationships. Also, I completely acknowledge that mechanistic studies (experimental and modeling) can be just as ho-axed as statistical studies.

IIRC, you felt that understanding the real-world effects (via properly done statistical studies) was more important than the understanding the underlying mechanistic effects (forgive me if I am putting incorrect words in your mouth).

Stepping back, I think that we are both correct. Let's say that the statistical studies showed that masking increased the rate of covid infection/hospitalization/death. I would really want to know what is mechanistically happening to produce such (an unexpected) result.

As for your above paragraph, I am in complete agreement.

And for some irony, the "mechanistic" guy wrote this while taking a break from writing up a statistical margin analysis study.

Regards.

[Pat]

New Health Affairs Paper Proves Mask Mandates Work| Or Does It? Challenges with Obs Research
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA-tljS4dh8

tl:dr
https://youtu.be/DA-tljS4dh8?t=879

This is why I, in part, respectfully disagree with Pat regarding the value of using statistical studies to determine the effectiveness of masking or lock-downs. Where I would agree is if, as Dr Prasad notes, clustered RCTs had been done. And with 100% transparency (e.g. all data, models, software, etc. are open source) and a robust, formal review process similar to that used for nuclear power plant licenses (you don't get to dismiss NRC or ACRS comments/questions on your analysis by declaring that you represent the science).

I'm not sure what you're referring to. I definitely believe there are statistical problems with all the studies, and I've repeated said the science is very weak. The basic problem is that, given a set of data, and given there are no clear and universal method for controlling for variables, there will always be ways of controlling for variables that show one result, or show the complete opposite. That's why it's important to decide, publicly and before your study is conducted, which variables will be controlled for, and how. It's a ward against self-selection bias. But even that doesn't erase the problem, because there is a strong bias toward publishing significant results, and not publishing negative results. And this bias occurs at multiple levels. (Did you find anything? Nah, let's try again. You didn't find anything, why would we publish this?)

Pages back (or maybe on a different thread) we had had a small difference of opinion on statistical vs. mechanistic studies. I prefer mechanistic studies to statistical studies, you had the opposite opinion. I suppose it comes down to my being mistrustful of correlation; I prefer causal relationships driven by first principles. That said, statistical studies, if done correctly, can be useful to tell you where to look for causal relationships. Also, I completely acknowledge that mechanistic studies (experimental and modeling) can be just as ho-axed as statistical studies.

IIRC, you felt that understanding the real-world effects (via properly done statistical studies) was more important than the understanding the underlying mechanistic effects (forgive me if I am putting incorrect words in your mouth).

Stepping back, I think that we are both correct. Let's say that the statistical studies showed that masking increased the rate of covid infection/hospitalization/death. I would really want to know what is mechanistically happening to produce such (an unexpected) result.

As for your above paragraph, I am in complete agreement.

And for some irony, the "mechanistic" guy wrote this while taking a break from writing up a statistical margin analysis study.

Regards.

I remember that. I do think physical studies, like airflow studies with masks, don't extrapolate well to human behavior. They're useful for understanding underlying mechanism and possible causes, but you can't take a physical study and then just conclude that it will have a certain effect in the real world. People and their interactions are complex, messy, and it's basically impossible to isolate variables.

But I also have a very low regard for the statistical studies. As I covered last post, data sets with a sufficient number of variables (basically any real world data set) can be made to say almost anything. If your definition of "significant" is there's a 1 in 20 chance it's just random noise (which is the usual standard), and there are thousands of ways to slice and dice the data, there will be thousands/20 ways to look at the data that show a significant result, even if the underlying data was just random noise. This is a fundamental problem, and one of the reasons behind the various replication crises. And as I've covered in other posts, the quality of the various statistical studies on masking and lockdowns is dismal, with all except two falling very low on the tiers of evidence based medicine. One of those two seems okay, and the other has major issues. But that still isn't conclusive.

And as Prasad pointed out, given the hyperpolarization on this matter, including among scientists, it may never be possible to draw any firm conclusions. Even without deliberate data manipulation, there's just too much inherent bias, and too much room to inadvertently introduce it.

I think this is an area where we need to understand the limits of science. This crosses multiple fields -- there are similar problems with the econometrics, for instance. We'd be in a much better place if pundits, politicians, journalists, science educators, and yes a hell of a lot of legitimate scientists, all recognized and clearly communicated the limits of what we know and what we can know, instead of providing definitive answers that matched political narratives. That's the key failing of public health, that I mentioned a couple pages ago.

[dkabq]

COVID masks | Do cloth masks work?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJgc2DLEl0s

[dkabq]

So obvious it was all a ho-ax that even SNL is mocking it.

COVID Dinner Discussion - SNL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k6xroHtn-8

[Ratman_tf]

So obvious it was all a ho-ax that even SNL is mocking it.

COVID Dinner Discussion - SNL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k6xroHtn-8

Totally predictable. There's a part of me that wants to punch every one of these nutbags who went psycho and now want to downplay their atrocious behavior.

[dkabq]

Explain to me the need to mandate vaccinating kids with an EUA vaccine? Or anyone else for that matter?
https://datavisualizations.heritage.org/public-health/covid-19-deaths-by-age/

[Kiero]

Explain to me the need to mandate vaccinating kids with an EUA vaccine? Or anyone else for that matter?
https://datavisualizations.heritage.org/public-health/covid-19-deaths-by-age/

It's never been about health or "science", but control.